Right whales return to Tybee Island; now the wait begins for babies

Thursday

Researchers spotted two female North Atlantic right whales about 20 miles southeast of Tybee Island Wednesday.

Nicknamed Magnet and Boomerang, the sight of these whales in early December — right on time for the calving season — is a huge relief to whale lovers.

That's because it's been a tough few years for North Atlantic right whales. Already highly endangered, they suffered the known loss of 17 individuals in 2017. In the last calving season, for the first time ever not a single baby was born.

Wildlife officials were holding their collective breath last week as they began annual aerial surveys to look for these bus-sized animals off the coasts of Georgia and Florida where they come to give birth in the winter.

"We're all just keeping our fingers crossed that the moms show up and have their calves in tow or they stick around and have their calves here," Clay George, the marine mammal coordinator with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said last week.

George can breathe a little easier now that the moms have begun to show up. The next milestone for the season will be new calves.

"That's necessary to help stop the slide in the population," George said. "Not only is the population flat now, but it's been declining since 2010. Now that decline is accelerating."

Magnet is 10 years old and has not given birth. The last time she was seen in Georgia waters was in 2012 as a 4-year-old. Boomerang is 23 and last gave birth in 2014.

At the heart of the population decline are human activities. The top two causes of whale deaths are entanglements in fishing gear and ship strikes, with the former the bigger concern.

"Something has to be done quickly to reduce the number of whales killed and injured with fishing rope," said George, who is among the most highly trained people in the country in responding to entangled whales, a dangerous and delicate operation. George helped remove fishing gear, including an enormous snow crab pot, from a right whale named Ruffian off the Georgia coast in early 2017.

Effects on birthing

A technical memo from NOAA released in September included the astonishing finding that among the known deaths of this long-lived species since 1970, not a single one could be attributed to natural causes. And entanglements take a toll on animals even if they don't die. Researchers suggest that "the drag from carrying rope and other gear for long periods of time can be energetically more expensive for a female than the migratory and developmental costs of a pregnancy."

Climate change is a factor, too. The Gulf of Maine, where right whales have long spent summers feeding on plankton, is warming faster than more than 99 percent of the world's water bodies, the NOAA memo reports. The warmer water has pushed whales farther north and into deeper water in search of food. It's pushed lobster into deeper water, too, and the lobster fishery is a significant source of entanglement.

It's estimated there are more than 1 million vertical lines leading to lobster pots in American and Canadian waters on the Atlantic coast. Nearly 85 percent of right whales have been entangled in fishing gear at least once, according to research conducted by Amy Knowlton of the New England Aquarium. Efforts to make the lobster fishery safer for whales are in their early stages. The New England Aquarium expects to do consumer outreach and education about sustainable lobster fisheries in 2019, Knowlton said.

Less abundant food, having to travel farther to find it and frequent entanglements all add up to females giving birth less frequently. In fact, researchers have seen the birthing interval increase just this century from four years to 10.

Fewer than 450 North Atlantic right whales remain. Called "urban whales" because of their tendency to hug the coast and be sighted frequently, right whales got their name from being the "right" whale to hunt in part because of that same habit. Whalers nearly drove them extinct by the early 1900s, but protections seemed to be working with a population increasing to about 500 in the first decade of this century. Now that trend is reversing. George noted that the tiny population is precariously short on females because of the stress of pregnancy and the long migration from New England summer feeding grounds to the Southeastern winter calving grounds. There are only about 150 females in the population, he said.

"It's really important how many females there are and what's the trend," George said. "As the population increased in the 2000s, it wasn't shared with the females."

In the last calving season, the one in which no calves were born, few whales migrated south. And the ones that did took their time. The aerial survey teams didn't spot a right whale in Georgia until Jan. 31.

It's possible females will abandon Georgia waters as a calving spot if climate change makes the water here warmer than they like, though George has seen no indication of that yet. For now the aerial survey teams are using sea surface temperatures to plan flights to the cooler water they prefer. The Florida-based flight team began surveys the first week of December. The Georgia-based team, which includes DNR and the Sea to Shore Alliance, followed.

New this year is an underwater surveillance system listening for whales around Cape Hatteras. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, the U.S. Navy and NOAA deployed autonomous underwater gliders equipped with hydrophones to listen for right whales calling to each other and give the survey team a heads up about their migratory progress. It might even change where they survey.

"If we have another bad season, the team can prospect in the Mid Atlantic," George said.

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